[Galaxy Note5 General] seh6183:
Let me start by saying that I think the Note 5 is the best device you can possibly buy to date. That's including all of the different mobile OS's that are out there. Beautiful quality hardware and software that works very well (utilizing the wacom digitizer and multi window features).

Now this post is just a warning to all of you who are considering the Note 5. You should take what I am about to say into consideration before you make a purchase. Me and a close friend both purchased Note 5's around the same time. He doesn't know much about phones, but I am constantly tweaking mine. I pretty quickly installed a custom rom and kernel to see if it truly made a difference in performance, subsequently throwing away my warranty forever. I showed my friend the HUGE difference between my phone and his and he agreed that he needed a custom rom and software as well.

For whatever reason these phones are turds out of the box. You wouldn't notice it most likely unless you had something to compare it to, but it's bad. You have all the horsepower in the world in that phone and they can't even get it to function fluidly and keep apps stored in ram for any length of time. Custom everything fixes all of this.

Now to the annoying part. My friend suddenly started having a problem with his volume down button. I, knowing that the warranties were gone, still reached out to Samsung. I hoped that explaining that rooting the phone couldn't possibly have anything to do with the volume button malfunctioning, would get through to them. Instead I was met with a low IQ human being that just kept repeating themselves over and over. I got to a supervisor and they simply read the rules from some handbook to me six thousand times until I couldn't bare it any longer. Not surprising it was a dead end.

So I had to consider other options. I thought about sending the phone to a repair center and just paying to have it fixed. I then remembered the one time I sent out an HTC One X for repair (new screen) and 2 months later the edge of the glass started to come up and they would do nothing to help me. Also in order to repair anything on the Note 5 you have to unseat the insane factory glue just to get into the phone. I'm not sure that the phone would be as sturdy by heating the glue to separate the phone to fix it. Didn't sound like a great option, but at least it was an option.

I then considered Samsung Protection plus. This would allow him to file a claim and get the phone repaired, albeit with an $80 deductible. Also the plan costs $120 just to get started. So that's 200 more dollars on top of a $750 phone. $900 bucks. However it was an option. But what if he had another small issue? Another 80. And again, another 80. It was all just overwhelming and he decided to move on and get another phone. I am following him as well because I'm afraid of this happening to me. I have a T-Mobile Note 5 which I went through ABSOLUTE HELL getting unlocked for AT&T and didn't want to go through that again if I ever needed a replacement.

None of this may ever happen to any of you. You all may go on without ever having a defect of any sort (or never root your phone to begin with) and never even need your warranty. I just wanted to show that this scenario exists and you should take it into consideration when choosing the phone that's best for you.

Thanks for reading.